Tag Archives: KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast

New Podcast Episode, Featuring Kevin Davis

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this episode, I interview Professor Kevin Davis, of the New York University Law School, about his new book, Between Impunity and Imperialism: The Regulation of Transnational Bribery (OUP 2019). As the book’s provocative title suggests, Professor Davis has a mixed assessment of the current legal framework on the regulation of transnational corruption (a framework dominated by rules set by the OECD countries, especially the United States), recognizing the progress that has been made in ending impunity, but at the same time highlighting the costs and limitations of the current system, especially from the perspective of developing countries. In addition to our general discussion of his critique–including the reasons for his use of the term “legal imperialism”–we also discuss a number of more specific legal questions, including individual vs. corporate liability for corruption, the nullification of contracts tainted by bribery, the asset recovery framework, and victim compensation more generally.

You can find this episode, along with links to previous podcast episodes, at the following locations:

KickBack is a collaborative effort between GAB and the ICRN. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends! And if you have suggestions for voices you’d like to hear on the podcast, just send me a message and let me know.

New Podcast Episode, Featuring Sergei Guriev

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this episode, I interview Professor Sergei Guriev, who until last month served as the Chief Economist for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). In the conversation (which took place a couple of months ago, when Professor Guriev was still in his EBRD post), we discuss a range of topics, including his academic work (both his research on the role of oligarchs in the Russian economy and his more recent work on how expanded high-speed internet access affects both perceptions of and political responses to widespread corruption); the question why some post-socialist countries were more successful than others in making a transition to a market economy and reasonably well-functioning democratic government, while others remain mired in corruption; and some of the major challenges and opportunities confronted by international organizations, like the EBRD, that want to help advance the fight against corruption in challenging political environments.

You can find this episode, along with links to previous podcast episodes, at the following locations:

KickBack is a collaborative effort between GAB and the ICRN. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends! And if you have suggestions for voices you’d like to hear on the podcast, just send me a message and let me know.

New Podcast Episode, Featuring Kieu Vien

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this episode, I interview Nguyen Thi Kieu Vien, the founder and executive director of Towards Transparency, an anticorruption civil society organization based in Vietnam and affiliated with the Transparency International movement. In the conversation, Vien discusses the history of her organization, the corruption challenges facing Vietnam, some of Towards Transparency’s major initiatives, and the promises and limitations of the Vietnamese government’s recent anticorruption reforms. Vien and I also discuss some of the special challenges of operating an anticorruption NGO in an environment like Vietnam, and how Towards Transparency has tried to overcome these challenges in order to achieve meaningful results within the constraints imposed by the political and legal environment.

You can find this episode, along with links to previous podcast episodes, at the following locations:

KickBack is a collaborative effort between GAB and the ICRN. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends! And if you have suggestions for voices you’d like to hear on the podcast, just send me a message and let me know.

New Podcast Episode, Featuring Cristina Bicchieri

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this episode, Nils Köbis interviews University of Pennsylvania Professor Cristina Bicchieri about her interdisciplinary work on corruption and anticorruption, which addresses a range of questions including why corruption can be so “sticky,” the role of social norms in shaping corrupt or non-corrupt behavior, how and why perceptions and attitudes toward corruption may differ between men and women, and what the implications of social norm theory are for effective anticorruption strategy.

You can find this episode, along with links to previous podcast episodes, at the following locations:

KickBack is a collaborative effort between GAB and the ICRN. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends! And if you have suggestions for voices you’d like to hear on the podcast, just send me a message and let me know.

New Podcast Episode, Featuring Oz Dincer

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. This week’s episode features an interview with Professor Oguzhan “Oz” Dincer, the Director of the Institute for Corruption Studies at Illinois State University. In the interview, Professor Dincer and I discuss a range of topics, including new approaches to the challenges of measuring corruption, the concept of “legal corruption,” the role of cultural factors in influencing corrupt behavior (both internationally and within the United States), and troubling developments related to political corruption in Turkey.

You can find this episode, along with links to previous podcast episodes, at the following locations:

KickBack is a collaborative effort between GAB and the ICRN. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends! And if you have suggestions for voices you’d like to hear on the podcast, just send me a message and let me know.

New Podcast Episode, Featuring Elise Bean

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. This week’s episode features an interview with Elise Bean, who previously worked for U.S. Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich) as staff director and chief counsel of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), which Senator Levin chaired. In the interview, Ms. Bean (who has also written a book about the Permanent Subcommittee’s work) discuss the role of legislative oversight, and the PSI in particular, in addressing money laundering, corruption, and related matters like financial fraud and tax evasion. Ms. Bean also addresses that various weaknesses and loopholes in current U.S. law on these topics and offers suggestions for reforms.

You can find this episode, along with links to previous podcast episodes, at the following locations:

KickBack is a collaborative effort between GAB and the ICRN. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends! And if you have suggestions for voices you’d like to hear on the podcast, just send me a message and let me know.

New Podcast Episode, Featuring Debra LaPrevotte

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. This week’s episode features an interview with Debra LaPrevotte. After a long and distinguished career with the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), where she specialized in asset seizure cases (among other things), Ms. LaPrevotte joined The Sentry, an international non-governmental organization that fights war cries and other atrocities in sub-Saharan Africa by “following the money”–shining a light on how kleptocrats and their cronies try to hide the assets that they amass from their illegal and exploitative activities. In the interview, Ms. LaPrevotte discusses here work on asset seizure at the FBI, her work on tracking and exposing kleptocratic assets for The Sentry, and her reflections and insights regarding broader controversies and policy questions related to the asset recovery and return process.

You can find this episode, along with links to previous podcast episodes, at the following locations:

KickBack is a collaborative effort between GAB and the ICRN. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends! And if you have suggestions for voices you’d like to hear on the podcast, just send me a message and let me know.

New Podcast Episode, Featuring Alina Mungiu-Pippidi

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, I interview Professor Alina Mungiu-Pippidi of the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin about the development of her interest in corruption, how her research led her to theorize about, and empirically document, a basic distinction between “particularism” and “ethical universalism” as organizing principles of governance, and what sorts of future research are needed in order to deepen our understanding about how to bring about a transition from the former to the latter. Professor Mungiu-Pippidi also shares her views on how external actors can help–but also how they may inadvertently make the problem worse.

You can find this episode, along with links to previous podcast episodes, at the following locations:

KickBack is a collaborative effort between GAB and the ICRN. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends! And if you have suggestions for voices you’d like to hear on the podcast, just send me a message and let me know.

New Podcast Episode, Featuring Paul Heywood

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. In this week’s episode, ICRN members Nils Köbis and Anna Schwickerath interview University of Nottingham Professor Paul Heywood about a range of topics, including the ways in which corruption subverts justice, how Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index helped put corruption on the global agenda, what academic researchers in this field have been doing too much (“admiring the problem”), and what new an dbetter questions scholars should be investigating in order to figure out how to combat corruption more effectively.

You can find this episode, along with links to previous podcast episodes, at the following locations:

KickBack is a collaborative effort between GAB and the ICRN. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends! And if you have suggestions for voices you’d like to hear on the podcast, just send me a message and let me know.

New Podcast Episode, Featuring Frederik Obermaier

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A new episode of KickBack: The Global Anticorruption Podcast is now available. This week’s episode features an interview with Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Frederik Obermaier (of the German publication Süddeutsche Zeitung), best known for his work on the Panama Papers investigations, and more recently for the story on the secret videos that exposed leading figures in one of Austria’s major political parties engaging in corrupt negotiations with someone they thought was the relative of a Russian oligarch. In the interview, Frederik and I discuss both of these high-profile stories, as well as broader questions regarding the role of investigative journalism in the fight against corruption and some of the challenges facing the independent media today.

You can find this episode, along with links to previous podcast episodes, at the following locations:

KickBack is a collaborative effort between GAB and the ICRN. If you like it, please subscribe/follow, and tell all your friends! And if you have suggestions for voices you’d like to hear on the podcast, just send me a message and let me know.